Where do you get your ideas?

I only know where an idea has come from after I’ve had the idea. If you’re asking me, ‘where do you get your ideas because I want to go there and get some too’, I would say to you: Don’t try to force yourself to think of ideas. Instead, just decide you want to write a story, or a poem, or a song and then go about your business while quietly holding on to the thought that you are looking for an idea. Return to this thought often, in a casual, curious sort of way. Sooner or later an idea will pop into your head. Then another. Then another. I guarantee it.

It is a mysterious process but that’s how it works for me. For example, when I wrote Sing, Pepi, Sing!, I only knew I wanted to write about a weird animal. That’s all I knew. I made the decision—I will write about a weird animal, and then I went about my day. Slowly but surely all the usual suspects popped into my head; dogs, cats, camels, possums, wombats. Then suddenly I recalled the time I had met a Mexican walking fish. I was captivated by her mystique and weirdness. Instantly I knew this was the critter I would write about. After that the ideas came faster and faster and became sillier and sillier. By the next day I was writing a story about a Mexican walking fish who plays guitar and sings and heads off to Hollywood and stands up to Hollywood crooks etc, etc. That’s how it goes. Every single time. Get the idea?

Do you write with a pen or on a computer?

I use both. I begin every story, every chapter, with a pad and pen. Then once my brain starts to outstrip my hand and the ideas are coming so quickly I can’t get them down in longhand, I switch to the computer. But always I begin with a pad and pen.

When do you write?

I spend the mornings rewriting and editing what I wrote the day before. By about 11 o’clock I’m over that and it’s time to get cracking and get some new material on the page. That’s the hardest part for me, the blank page. On an average day I will write about 500-700 brand new words. On a great day I will bash out 1500-2000. I usually stop work around 4pm when my son comes home from school. Although sometimes I am still writing at 7pm. We have porridge for tea on those nights. I never write on weekends.

How long does it take to write a book?

It’s hard to answer that question because I never work on one project at a time. Tan Callahan's Secret Spy Files: The Mystery of Purple Haunt, took about twelve months to complete. But I worked on several other projects during that time including my first full-length novel, Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children. Tensy took four years to write.

Since when did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

Since always. It started when my grade one teacher read us The Magic Wishing Chair. At that moment I was smitten. I thought, that’s what I want to do! Write stories! But it seemed a highfalutin’ ambition for a kid from the bush, so I stuffed down the dream and tried to ignore it. But the dream persisted and over the years trailed me like a doppelganger. In form four, I wrote a passionate response the Rolling Stones’ song, Sister Morphine. (What can I say? It was the 70s). My English teacher said it was ‘extremely perceptive’.
I had to look up ‘perceptive’ in the dictionary. Anyway, by the time I got into my thirties I was a little more focussed. A little more daring. I took myself off to university and did an honours degree in literature. Then I got busy and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I’m still writing now…

Who is the misery-girl?

The misery-girl is a character from Enid Blyton’s novel The Second Form At St. Clare’s. I was a devoted Enid Blyton fan as a kid. Still am, really.  I even managed to sneak ginger beer into Tan Callahan and the Mystery of Purple of Haunt.